But there should be as little
redistribution as possible. Men were sick of it all, and would not be
exigeant. Something should be done for overgrown counties;--something
for new towns which had prospered in brick and mortar. It would
be easy to crush up a peccant borough or two,--a borough that had
been discovered in its sin. And a few boroughs now blessed with
two members might consent to be blessed only with one. Fifteen
small clauses might settle the redistribution, in spite of Mr.
Turnbull,--if only Mr. Daubeny would be good-natured.
Neither the weather, which was very hot, nor the tedium of the
session, which had been very great, nor the anxiety of Ministers,
which was very pressing, had any effect in impairing the energy
of Mr. Turnbull. He was as instant, as oratorical, as hostile, as
indignant about redistribution as he had been about the franchise. He
had been sure then, and he was sure now, that Ministers desired to
burke the question, to deceive the people, to produce a bill that
should be no bill. He brought out his clause,--and made Loughton
his instance. "Would the honourable gentleman who sat lowest on
the Treasury bench,--who at this moment was in sweet confidential
intercourse with the right honourable gentleman now President of the
Board of Trade, who had once been a friend of the people,--would the
young Lord of the Treasury get up in his place and tell them that
no peer of Parliament had at present a voice in sending a member to
their House of Commons,--that no peer would have a voice if this
bill, as proposed by the Government, were passed in its present
useless, ineffectual, conservative, and most dishonest form?"
Phineas, who replied to this, and who told Mr.
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