"The question has not arisen between my associates and myself, but I do not imagine that we should hold conflicting views, and I may say that for my part I enter cordially into the spirit of the suggestion," replied Hampden frankly. "Anything irregular that could come within the meaning of political action in its widest sense I should be favourable towards making the object of a general pardon.... While we are together, I will go a step further, and on this point I have the expressed agreement of my friends. You, sir, have assumed without any reserve that our party will be returned to office. I accept that assumption. You have also compared our work to the pacification of a conquered nation. That also may be largely admitted. We shall be less a political party returned to power by the even chances of a keenly-fought election, and checked by an alert opposition, than a social autocracy imposing our wishes--as we believe for the public good--on the country. For twenty years, as I forecast the future, there will be no effective opposition. Yet a great deal of our work will have reference to the class whom the opposition would represent, the class upon whose wise and statesmanlike pacification the tranquillity, and largely the prosperity, of the country, will depend." Some few began to catch the drift of Hampden's meaning, and those who did all glanced instinctively towards Cecil Brown. "You have used, and I have accepted, the comparison of a conquered nation," continued Sir John. "When a country has been forcibly occupied the work of pacification is one of the first taken in hand by a prudent conqueror. There is usually a Board or Committee of Conciliation, and in that body are to be found some of the foremost of those who resisted invasion while resistance seemed availing.... It would be analogous to that, in my opinion, if a supporter of the present Government was offered and accepted a position in the next. There would be no suggestion--there would be no possibility--of his being in accord with the Cabinet in its general policy. He would be there as an expert to render service to both parties in the work of healing the scars of conflict. If the proposal appears to be exceptional and the position untenable at first sight, it is only because the prosaic parliamentary machinery of normal times has by a miracle been preserved into times that are abnormal." There was an infection of low laughter, amused, sardonic, some good-natured and a little ill-natured, and a few cries of "Cecil Brown!" in a subdued key.