Before the 11th of November, the day on which Parliament was to meet, the whole country was in a hubbub¹. Consternation² and triumph were perhaps equally predominant, and equally strong. There were those who declared that now at length was Great Britain to be ruined in actual present truth; and those who asserted that, of a sudden, after a fashion so wholly unexpected as to be divine — as great fires, great famines, and great wars are called divine — a mighty³ hand had been stretched out to take away the remaining incubus⁴ of superstition⁵, priestcraft, and bigotry⁶ under which England had hitherto been labouring. The proposed disestablishment of the State Church of England was, of course, the subject of this diversity of opinion.

And there was not only diversity, but with it great confusion. The political feelings of the country are, as a rule, so well marked that it is easy, as to almost every question, to separate the sheep from the goats. With but few exceptions one can tell where to look for the supporters and where for the opponents of one measure or of another. Meetings are called in this or in that public hall to assist or to combat the Minister of the day, and men know what they are about. But now it was not so. It was understood that Mr Daubeny, the accredited⁷ leader of the Conservatives, was about to bring in the bill, but no one as yet knew who would support the bill, His own party, to a man — without a single exception — were certainly opposed to the measure in their minds. It must be so. It could not but be certain that they should hate it. Each individual sitting on the Conservative side in either House did most certainly within his own bosom⁸ cry Ichabod when the fatal news reached his ears. But such private opinions and inward wailings need not, and probably would not, guide the body. Ichabod had been cried before, though probably never with such

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