Many went much further than this, and were prepared
to prove that were he once condemned he could not afterwards sit in
the House, even if re-elected.
Now there was unquestionably an intense desire,--since the arrival of
these telegrams,--that Phineas Finn should retain his seat. It may be
a question whether he would not have been the most popular man in the
House could he have sat there on the day after the telegrams arrived.
The Attorney-General had declared,--and many others had declared
with him,--that this information about the latch-key did not in
the least affect the evidence as given against Mr. Finn. Could it
have been possible to convict the other man, merely because he had
surreptitiously caused a door-key of the house in which he lived
to be made for him? And how would this new information have been
received had Lord Fawn sworn unreservedly that the man he had seen
running out of the mews had been Phineas Finn? It was acknowledged
that the latchkey could not be accepted as sufficient evidence
against Mealyus.
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