And now they sat over their wine together, talking pleasantly of bygone times and old friends,—many lost to them by death, and some by distance.
“I take it,” said Fossbrooke, after a pause, “that you are not sorry to get back to England.”
Lord Wilmington smiled, but said nothing.
“You never could have cared much for the pomp and state of this office, and I suppose beyond these there is little in it.”
“You have hit it exactly. There is nothing to be done here,—nothing. The shortness of the period that is given to any man to rule this country, and the insecurity of his tenure, even for that time, compel him to govern by a party; and the result is, we go on alternately pitting one faction against the other, till we end by marshalling the nation into two camps instead of massing them into one people. Then there is another difficulty. In Ireland the question is not so much what you do as by whom you do it. It is the men, not the measures, that are thought of. There is not an infringement on personal freedom I could not carry out, if you only let me employ for its enactment some popular demagogue. Give me a good patriot in Ireland, and I 'll engage to crush every liberty in the island.”
“I don't envy you your office, then,” said Fossbrooke, gravely.
“Of course you don't; and between ourselves, Fossbrooke, I 'm not heartbroken by the thought of laying it down. I suspect, too, that after a spell of Irish official life every statesman ought to lie fallow for a while: he grows so shifty and so unscrupulous here, he is not fit for home work.”
“And how soon do you leave?”
“Let me see,” said he, pondering. “We shall be beaten to-night or to-morrow night at farthest. They 'll take a day to talk it over, and another to see the Queen; and allowing three days more for the negotiations back and forward, I think I may say we shall be out by this day week. A week of worry and annoyance it will be!”
“How so?”