‘So you are, old fellow. You were talking just the same way when I came here to preach—it seems to me ages ago—and a good deal has happened since then.’
‘Just what I was going to say,’ said the clerical brother. ‘Politically we have made great progress. We are on the eve of extension of the franchise and vote by ballot, and whoever we return at Sloville—they are safe. I could have got up a petition against bribery and corruption in the place. I ought, perhaps, you say, to have done so. Well, I should have had to spend hundreds of pounds, which I have not got; and if I had succeeded and got the borough disfranchised, I should never have been able to show my face in the town again.’
‘But you would have had another call,’ said Wentworth, with a touch of sarcasm.
‘Not at my time of life. But that is a digression. You London newspaper men may write about bribery and corruption, and you can do good in that way, more even than if you get into Parliament.’
‘I am of the same opinion,’ said Wentworth; ‘but, tell me, is the borough so very bad?’
‘That it is. I can point you to no end of people who take money and are not ashamed. There are gangs of them who meet in public-houses, with whom each party negotiates, and who turn the scale. To-day they are Liberal, to-morrow they will be Conservative. The men are notorious, but they are useful to both parties. The only remedy for that is extension of the suffrage so as to include all householders, and to make bribery impossible by the increase of the number to be bribed.’
‘I would go a step further,’ said Wentworth. ‘In our great cities few of our working classes have that qualification. This raises a demand for a lodger franchise—that is, a fancy franchise—that will give a great opening for ingenuity and fraud, and will only work well for the lawyers, to whom such a state of things will bring plenty of business. No, we must fall back on manhood suffrage. It is the only real and direct qualification. Give the working man a vote, let him feel that he is part and parcel of the community, bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh—not a pariah politically, but a brother man—and he will use his vote for his own advantage, and for that of the rest of the community. ‘But, now I think of it, there is a better plan.’