"Of course you have, my dear boy," said
Barrington, clapping him on the back. "I shouldn't come to you unless
you had views. But your views and ours are the same, and you're
just the lad for Galway. You mightn't have such an opening again
in your life, and of course you'll stand for Loughshane." Then the
conversation was over, the private secretary went away to arrange
some other little matter of the kind, and Phineas Finn was left alone
to consider the proposition that had been made to him.
To become a member of the British Parliament! In all those hot
contests at the two debating clubs to which he had belonged, this
had been the ambition which had moved him. For, after all, to what
purpose of their own had those empty debates ever tended? He and
three or four others who had called themselves Liberals had been
pitted against four or five who had called themselves Conservatives,
and night after night they had discussed some ponderous subject
without any idea that one would ever persuade another, or that their
talking would ever conduce to any action or to any result. But each
of these combatants had felt,--without daring to announce a hope on
the subject among themselves,--that the present arena was only a
trial-ground for some possible greater amphitheatre, for some future
debating club in which debates would lead to action, and in which
eloquence would have power, even though persuasion might be out of
the question.
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