‘I am sorry,’ said Coningsby, rather pale, but speaking with firmness, ‘I am sorry that I could not support the Conservative party.’
‘By ——!’ exclaimed Lord Monmouth, starting in his seat, ‘some woman has got hold of him, and made him a Whig!’
‘No, my dear grandfather,’ said Coningsby, scarcely able to repress a smile, serious as the interview was becoming, ‘nothing of the kind, I assure you. No person can be more anti-Whig.’
‘I don’t know what you are driving at, sir,’ said Lord Monmouth, in a hard, dry tone.
‘I wish to be frank, sir,’ said Coningsby, ‘and am very sensible of your goodness in permitting me to speak to you on the subject. What I mean to say is, that I have for a long time looked upon the Conservative party as a body who have betrayed their trust; more from ignorance, I admit, than from design; yet clearly a body of individuals totally unequal to the exigencies of the epoch, and indeed unconscious of its real character.’
‘You mean giving up those Irish corporations?’ said Lord Monmouth. ‘Well, between ourselves, I am quite of the same opinion. But we must mount higher; we must go to ‘28 for the real mischief. But what is the use of lamenting the past? Peel is the only man; suited to the times and all that; at least we must say so, and try to believe so; we can’t go back. And it is our own fault that we have let the chief power out of the hands of our own order. It was never thought of in the time of your great-grandfather, sir. And if a commoner were for a season permitted to be the nominal Premier to do the detail, there was always a secret committee of great 1688 nobles to give him his instructions.’
‘I should be very sorry to see secret committees of great 1688 nobles again,’ said Coningsby.
‘Then what the devil do you want to see?’ said Lord Monmouth.
‘Political faith,’ said Coningsby, ‘instead of political infidelity.’
‘Hem!’ said Lord Monmouth.