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Phineas Finn is a penniless Irish MP who has risen through aristocratic patronage and pocket-borough seats to a salaried under-secretaryship. When his mentor Mr. Monk leaves the cabinet to push an Irish tenant-right measure the government opposes, Phineas votes with Monk out of conviction. He must resign, loses the income his career depends on, and returns to Ireland, where he marries his hometown sweetheart Mary Flood Jones.
Joining a government means agreeing in advance to vote with it, including on measures you privately think wrong. Once in office, the only way to act on conviction is to leave it, so every principled stand is paid for with the position that made the stand visible.
A man without private means who takes seats and posts from patrons pays for them in obligation rather than money. He cannot afford to lose the salary, and he cannot afford to offend the people who control his seat. Every door patronage opens also narrows the range of positions he can take without ruin. Financial independence is the precondition for political independence, not a reward that comes after it.
In a world where women are shut out of formal office, marriage becomes the main instrument for gaining money, influence and position. For ambitious men it is a funding decision as well as a romantic one. Lady Laura Standish marries the rich, rigid Robert Kennedy to gain a political platform, and the result is misery. Phineas turns down the wealthy Madame Max Goesler's offer of marriage, and with it the fortune that could have freed him. Reading courtship as a set of trades between love, money and influence explains choices that look like purely personal ones.