There was another matter of public interest going on at this time which created a great excitement. And this, too, added to the importance of Phineas Finn, though Phineas was not the hero of the piece. Mr Browborough, the late member for Tankerville, was tried for bribery². It will be remembered that when Phineas contested the borough¹ in the autumn, this gentleman was returned. He was afterwards unseated, as the result of a petition before the judge, and Phineas was declared to be the true member. The judge who had so decided³ had reported to the Speaker that further inquiry⁴ before a commission into the practices of the late and former elections at Tankerville would be expedient⁵, and such commission had sat in the months of January and February. Half the voters in Tankerville had been examined, and many who were not voters. The commissioners⁶ swept very clean, being new brooms, and in their report recommended that Mr Browborough, whom they had themselves declined to examine, should be prosecuted⁸. That report was made about the end of March, when Mr Daubeny’s great bill was impending⁹. Then there arose a double feeling about Mr Browborough, who had been regarded by many as a model member of Parliament, a man who never spoke¹⁰, constant in his attendance, who wanted nothing, who had plenty of money, who gave dinners, to whom a seat in Parliament was the be-all and the end-all of life. It could not be the wish of any gentleman, who had been accustomed to his slow step in the lobbies, and his burly form always quiescent¹¹ on one of the upper seats just below the gangway on the Conservative side of the House, that such a man should really be punished. When the new laws regarding bribery came to take that shape the hearts of members revolted from the cruelty — the hearts even of members on the other side of the House. As long as a seat was in question the battle should of course be fought to the nail. Every kind of

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