"Not at all: Danvers throws cold water on the notion of Saxboro', and does not even hint that his party will help me to any other opening. Party has few openings at its disposal nowadays for any young man. The schoolmaster being abroad has swept away the school for statesmen as he has swept away the school for actors,—an evil, and an evil of a far greater consequence to the destinies of the nation than any good likely to be got from the system that succeeded it."
"But it is of no use railing against things that can't be helped. If I were you, I would postpone all ambition of Parliament and read for the bar."
"The advice is sound, but too unpalatable to be taken. I am resolved to find a seat in the House, and where there is a will there is a way."
"I am not so sure of that."
"But I am."
"Judging by what your contemporaries at the University tell me of your
speeches at the Debating Society, you were not then an ultra-Radical.
But it is only an ultra-Radical who has a chance of success at
Saxboro'."
"I am no fanatic in politics. There is much to be said on all sides: /coeteris paribus/, I prefer the winning side to the losing; nothing succeeds like success."
"Ay, but in politics there is always reaction. The winning side one day may be the losing side another. The losing side represents a minority, and a minority is sure to comprise more intellect than a majority: in the long run intellect will force its way, get a majority and then lose it, because with a majority it will become stupid."
"Cousin Mivers, does not the history of the world show you that a single individual can upset all theories as to the comparative wisdom of the few or the many? Take the wisest few you can find, and one man of genius not a tithe so wise crushes them into powder. But then that man of genius, though he despises the many, must make use of them. That done, he rules them. Don't you see how in free countries political destinations resolve themselves into individual impersonations? At a general election it is one name around which electors rally. The candidate may enlarge as much as he pleases on political principles, but all his talk will not win him votes enough for success, unless he says, 'I go with Mr. A.,' the minister, or with Mr. Z., the chief of the opposition. It was not the Tories who beat the Whigs when Mr. Pitt dissolved Parliament. It was Mr. Pitt who beat Mr. Fox, with whom in general political principle—slave-trade, Roman Catholic emancipation, Parliamentary reform—he certainly agreed much more than he did with any man in his own cabinet."
"Take care, my young cousin," cried Mivers, in accents of alarm; "don't set up for a man of genius. Genius is the worst quality a public man can have nowadays: nobody heeds it, and everybody is jealous of it."