"Mrs. Mason. If such a man as you, sir, would consent to put himself in
nomination at the next election, every true Liberal in this place
would rush to support you; and crush the oligarchy who rides over the
liberties of this borough!"

"Something of this sort, gentlemen, I own to you had crossed my mind,"
Thomas Newcome remarked. "When I saw that disgrace to my name, and the
name of my father's birthplace, representing the borough in Parliament,
I thought for the credit of the town and the family, the Member for
Newcome at least might be an honest man. I am an old soldier; have
passed all my life in India; and am little conversant with affairs at
home" (cries of "You are, you are"). "I hoped that my son, Mr. Clive
Newcome, might have been found qualified to contest this borough against
his unworthy cousin, and possibly to sit as your representative in
Parliament. The wealth I have had the good fortune to amass will descend
to him naturally, and at no very distant period of time, for I am nearly
seventy years of age, gentlemen."

The gentlemen are astonished at this statement.

"But," resumed the Colonel; "my son Clive, as my friend Bayham knows,
and to my own regret and mortification, as I don't care to confess to
you, declares he has no interest or desire in politics, or for public
distinction--prefers his own pursuits--and even these I fear do not
absorb him--declines the offer which I made him, to present himself in
opposition to Sir Barnes Newcome. It becomes men in a certain station,
as I think, to assert that station; and though a few years back I never
should have thought of public life at all, and proposed to end my days
in quiet as a retired dragoon officer, since--since it has pleased
Heaven to increase very greatly my pecuniary means, to place me, as a
director and manager of an important banking company, in a station of
great public responsibility, I and my brother-directors have thought it
but right that one of us should sit in Parliament, if possible, and I am
not a man to shirk from that or from any other duty."

"Colonel, will you attend a meeting of electors which we will call,
and say as much to them and as well?" cries Mr. Potts. "Shall I put
an announcement in my paper to the effect that you are ready to come
forward?"

"I am prepared to do so, my good sir."

And presently this solemn palaver ended.

Besides the critical article upon the Baronet's lecture, of which Mr.
Warrington was the au