It
would no doubt be copied into every London paper, and into hundreds
of provincial papers, and every journal so copying it would be bound
to declare that it was taken from the columns of the _People's
Banner_. It was, indeed, addressed "To the Editor of the _People's
Banner_" in the printed slip which Mr. Slide had shown to Phineas
Finn, though Kennedy himself had not prefixed to it any such
direction. And the letter, in the hands of Quintus Slide, would
not simply have been a letter. It might have been groundwork for,
perhaps, some half-dozen leading articles, all of a most attractive
kind. Mr. Slide's high moral tone upon such an occasion would have
been qualified to do good to every British matron, and to add
virtues to the Bench of Bishops. All this he had postponed with some
inadequately defined idea that he could do better with the property
in his hands by putting himself into personal communication with the
persons concerned. If he could manage to reconcile such a husband to
such a wife,--or even to be conspicuous in an attempt to do so; and
if he could make the old Earl and the young Member of Parliament
feel that he had spared them by abstaining from the publication, the
results might be very beneficial.
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