job thornberry comes into the story with the anti-corn-law league, representing the remarkable change in english politics which made the whigs so different from what they were fifty years earlier and which necessitated the passage of reform bills even by the conservative derby-disraeli ministries. job thornberry may be richard cobden; for he certainly has much of cobden's subject in him. the energetic and capable minister lord roehampton is taken to be lord palmerston, and count ferrol is perhaps bismarck. neuchatel, the great banker, is the historical rothschild; cardinal henry edward manning figures as the tendentious papist nigel penruddock.