In the definitive moment of this story, Sir Thomas learns that his reluctant expenditures for campaign costs were only the first of the demands to be made on his purse. After apparently winning the election, he is persuaded by Mr. Pabsby, the Wesleyan preacher, to make a contribution for a new Wesleyan chapel. (Mr. Pabsby has been shown to us as having a "soft, greasy voice,--a voice made of pretence, politeness, and saliva.") But then Sir Thomas learns from his "supporters" that the election will probably be contested, and that he will need the loyalty of his supporters if he is to prevail. The list of requirements--personal donations for all the schools and all the churches, as well as fifty pounds for the old women of the borough at Christmas--goes on and on. Poor Sir Thomas. To make a long story short, he refuses any further favors, the petition overturns his election, and the investigation discloses that Percycross is such a corrupt borough that it has lost all its representation in Parliament. Trollope occasionally indulged in dispensing little lessons in the facts of life. Early in the story Sir Thomas goes to Portsmouth to meet his newly orphaned nineteen-year-old niece, whom he has never seen. He has declared that he will serve as her guardian, and as he waits to meet her, he is apprehensive. And now as he observes all the men taking turns to offer her favors, he learns about "priority of service": There are certain favours in life which are very charming,--but very unjust to others, and which we may perhaps lump under the name of priority of service. Money will hardly buy it. When money does buy it, there is no injustice. When priority of service is had, like a coach-and-four, by the man who can afford to pay for it, industry, which is the source of wealth, receives its fitting reward. . . . But priority of service is perhaps more readily accorded to feminine beauty, and especially to unprotected feminine beauty, than to any other form of claim. Whether or no this is ever felt as a grievance, ladies who are not beautiful may perhaps be able to say. Walt Disney's film makers understood this in producing _Mary Poppins_, for whom "boxes and trunks seemed to extricate themselves." But even today one can hardly disagree with Trollope that "priority of service is perhaps more readily accorded to feminine beauty" than to any other claim.