Any one reading the Conservative papers of the time, and hearing the Conservative speeches in the borough,--any one at least who lived so remote as not to have learned what these things really mean,--would have thought that England's welfare depended on Melmotte's return. In the enthusiasm of the moment, the attacks made on his character were answered by eulogy as loud as the censure was bitter. The chief crime laid to his charge was connected with the ruin of some great continental assurance company, as to which it was said that he had so managed it as to leave it utterly stranded, with an enormous fortune of his own. It was declared that every shilling which he had brought to England with him had consisted of plunder stolen from the shareholders in the company. Now the 'Evening Pulpit,' in its endeavour to make the facts of this transaction known, had placed what it called the domicile of this company in Paris, whereas it was ascertained that its official head-quarters had in truth been placed at Vienna. Was not such a blunder as this sufficient to show that no merchant of higher honour than Mr Melmotte had ever adorned the Exchanges of modern capitals? And then two different newspapers of the time, both of them antagonistic to Melmotte, failed to be in accord on a material point. One declared that Mr Melmotte was not in truth possessed of any wealth. The other said that he had derived his wealth from those unfortunate shareholders. Could anything betray so bad a cause as contradictions such as these? Could anything be so false, so weak, so malignant, so useless, so wicked, so self-condemned,--in fact, so 'Liberal' as a course of action such as this? The belief naturally to be deduced from such statements, nay, the unavoidable conviction on the minds--of, at any rate, the Conservative newspapers--was that Mr Melmotte had accumulated an immense fortune, and that he had never robbed any shareholder of a shilling.
The friends of Melmotte had moreover a basis of hope, and were enabled to sound premonitory notes of triumph, arising from causes quite external to their party. The 'Breakfast Table' supported Melmotte, but the 'Breakfast Table' was not a Conservative organ. This support was given, not to the great man's political opinions, as to which a well-known writer in that paper suggested that the great man had probably not as yet given very much attention to the party questions which divided the country,--but to his commercial position. It was generally acknowledged that few men living,--perhaps no man alive,-- had so acute an insight into the great commercial questions of the age as Mr Augustus Melmotte. In whatever part of the world he might have acquired his commercial experience,--for it had been said repeatedly that Melmotte was not an Englishman,--he now made London his home and Great Britain his country, and it would be for the welfare of the country that such a man should sit in the British Parliament. Such were the arguments used by the 'Breakfast Table' in supporting Mr Melmotte. This was, of course, an assistance;--and not the less so because it was asserted in other papers that the country would be absolutely disgraced by his presence in Parliament. The hotter the opposition the keener will be the support. Honest good men, men who really loved their country, fine gentlemen, who had received unsullied names from great ancestors, shed their money right and left, and grew hot in personally energetic struggles to have this man returned to Parliament as the head of the great Conservative mercantile interests of Great Britain!