‘You have no great faith in our firmness?’
‘Male firmness is very often obstinacy: women have always something better, worth all qualities; they have tact.’
‘A compliment to the sex from so finished a critic as Lord Eskdale is appreciated.’
But at this moment the arrival of some guests terminated the conversation, and Lord Eskdale moved away, and approached a group which Lady Everingham was enlightening.
‘My dear Lord Fitz-booby,’ her Ladyship observed, ‘in politics we require faith as well as in all other things.’
Lord Fitz-booby looked rather perplexed; but, possessed of considerable official experience, having held high posts, some in the cabinet, for nearly a quarter of a century, he was too versed to acknowledge that he had not understood a single word that had been addressed to him for the last ten minutes. He looked on with the same grave, attentive stolidity, occasionally nodding his head, as he was wont of yore when he received a deputation on sugar duties or joint-stock banks, and when he made, as was his custom when particularly perplexed, an occasional note on a sheet of foolscap paper.
‘An Opposition in an age of revolution,’ continued Lady Everingham, ‘must be founded on principles. It cannot depend on mere personal ability and party address taking advantage of circumstances. You have not enunciated a principle for the last ten years; and when you seemed on the point of acceding to power, it was not on a great question of national interest, but a technical dispute respecting the constitution of an exhausted sugar colony.’
‘If you are a Conservative party, we wish to know what you want to conserve,’ said Lord Vere.
‘If it had not been for the Whig abolition of slavery,’ said Lord Fitz-booby, goaded into repartee, ‘Jamaica would not have been an exhausted sugar colony.’
‘Then what you do want to conserve is slavery?’ said Lord Vere.