Phineas Finn had sundry gifts, a powerful and pleasant voice, which
he had learned to modulate, a handsome presence, and a certain
natural mixture of modesty and self-reliance, which would certainly
protect him from the faults of arrogance and pomposity, and which,
perhaps, might carry him through the perils of his new position. And
he had also the great advantage of friends in the House who were
anxious that he should do well. But he had not that gift of slow
blood which on the former occasion would have enabled him to remember
his prepared speech, and which would now have placed all his own
resources within his own reach. He began with the expression of an
opinion that every true reformer ought to accept Mr. Mildmay's bill,
even if it were accepted only as an instalment,--but before he had
got through these sentences, he became painfully conscious that he
was repeating his own words.
He was cheered almost from the outset, and yet he knew as he went
on that he was failing. He had certain arguments at his fingers'
ends,--points with which he was, in truth, so familiar that he need
hardly have troubled himself to arrange them for special use,--and he
forgot even these. He found that he was going on with one platitude
after another as to the benefit of reform, in a manner that would
have shamed him six or seven years ago at a debating club.
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