THE ADDRESS.
Before the 11th of November, the day on which Parliament was to meet,
the whole country was in a hubbub. Consternation 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 mighty hand had been
stretched out to take away the remaining incubus of superstition,
priestcraft, and bigotry 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 accredited
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 bosom 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 intensity of feeling. Disestablishment might be worse than Free
Trade or Household Suffrage, but was not more absolutely opposed to
Conservative convictions than had been those great measures. And yet
the party, as a party, had swallowed them both. To the first and
lesser evil, a compact little body of staunch Commoners had stood
forth in opposition,--but nothing had come of it to those true
Britons beyond a feeling of living in the cold shade of exclusion.
When the greater evil arrived, that of Household Suffrage,--a measure
which twenty years since would hardly have been advocated by the
advanced Liberals of the day,--the Conservatives had learned to
acknowledge the folly of clinging to their own convictions, and had
swallowed the dose without serious disruption of their ranks. Every
man,--with but an exception or two,--took the measure up, some with
faces so singularly distorted as to create true pity, some with an
assumption of indifference, some with affected glee. But in the
double process the party had become used to this mode of carrying on
the public service. As poor old England must go to the dogs, as the
doom had been pronounced against the country that it should be ruled
by the folly of the many foolish, and not by the wisdom of the few
wise, why should the few wise remain out in the cold,--seeing, as
they did, that by so doing no good would be done to the country?
Dissensions among their foes did, when properly used, give them
power,--but such power they could only use by carrying measures which
they themselves believed to be ruinous. But the ruin would be as
certain should they abstain. Each individual might have gloried
in standing aloof,--in hiding his face beneath his toga, and in
remembering that Rome did once exist in her splendour. But a party
cannot afford to hide its face in its toga. A party has to be
practical. A party can only live by having its share of Garters,
lord-lieutenants, bishops, and attorney-generals. Though the country
were ruined, the party should be supported. Hitherto the party had
been supported, and had latterly enjoyed almost its share of stars
and Garters,--thanks to the individual skill and strategy of that
great English political Von Moltke Mr. Daubeny.
And now what would the party say about the disestablishment of the
Church? Even a party must draw the line somewhere. It was bad to
sacrifice things mundane; but this thing was the very Holy of Holies!
Was nothing to be conserved by a Conservative party? What if Mr.
Daubeny were to explain some day to the electors of East Barsetshire
that an hereditary peerage was an absurdity? What if in some rural
nook of his Boeotia he should suggest in ambiguous language to the
farmers that a Republic was the only form of Government capable of
a logical defence? Duke had already said to Duke, and Earl to Earl,
and Baronet to Baronet that there must be a line somewhere. Bishops
as a rule say but little to each other, and now were afraid to
say anything. The Church, which had been, which was, so truly
beloved;--surely that must be beyond the line! And yet there crept
through the very marrow of the party an agonising belief that Mr.
Daubeny would carry the bulk of his party with him into the lobby of
the House of Commons.
But if such was the dismay of the Conservatives, how shall any writer
depict the consternation of the Liberals? If there be a feeling
odious to the mind of a sober, hardworking man, it is the feeling
that the bread he has earned is to be taken out of his mouth. The
pay, the patronage, the powers, and the pleasure of Government were
all due to the Liberals. "God bless my soul," said Mr. Ratler, who
always saw things in a practical light, "we have a larger fighting
majority than any party has had since Lord Liverpool's time. They
have no right to attempt it. They are bound to go out." "There's
nothing of honesty left in politics," said Mr. Bonteen, declaring
that he was sick of the life. Barrington Erle thought that the whole
Liberal party should oppose the measure. Though they were Liberals
they were not democrats; nor yet infidels. But when Barrington Erle
said this, the great leaders of the Liberal party had not as yet
decided on their ground of action.
There was much difficulty in reaching any decision. It had been
asserted so often that the disestablishment of the Church was only a
question of time, that the intelligence of the country had gradually
so learned to regard it. Who had said so, men did not know and did
not inquire;--but the words were spoken everywhere. Parsons with
sad hearts,--men who in their own parishes were enthusiastic, pure,
pious, and useful,--whispered them in the dead of the night to the
wives of their bosoms. Bishops, who had become less pure by contact
with the world at clubs, shrugged their shoulders and wagged their
heads, and remembered comfortably the sanctity of vested interests.
Statesmen listened to them with politeness, and did not deny that
they were true. In the free intercourse of closest friendships the
matter was discussed between ex-Secretaries of State. The Press
teemed with the assertion that it was only a question of time. Some
fervent, credulous friends predicted another century of life;--some
hard-hearted logical opponents thought that twenty years would put an
end to the anomaly:--a few stout enemies had sworn on the hustings
with an anathema that the present Session should see the deposition
from her high place of this eldest daughter of the woman of Babylon.
But none had expected the blow so soon as this; and none certainly
had expected it from this hand.
But what should the Liberal party do? Ratler was for opposing Mr.
Daubeny with all their force, without touching the merits of the
case. It was no fitting work for Mr. Daubeny, and the suddenness of
the proposition coming from such a quarter would justify them now and
for ever, even though they themselves should disestablish everything
before the Session were over. Barrington Erle, suffering under a real
political conviction for once in his life, was desirous of a positive
and chivalric defence of the Church. He believed in the twenty years.
Mr. Bonteen shut himself up in disgust. Things were amiss; and, as he
thought, the evil was due to want of party zeal on the part of his
own leader, Mr. Gresham. He did not dare to say this, lest, when
the house door should at last be opened, he might not be invited to
enter with the others; but such was his conviction. "If we were all
a little less in the abstract, and a little more in the concrete, it
would be better for us." Laurence Fitzgibbon, when these words had
been whispered to him by Mr. Bonteen, had hardly understood them;
but it had been explained to him that his friend had meant "men,
not measures." When Parliament met, Mr. Gresham, the leader of the
Liberal party, had not as yet expressed any desire to his general
followers.
The Queen's Speech was read, and the one paragraph which seemed
to possess any great public interest was almost a repetition of
the words which Mr. Daubeny had spoken to the electors of East
Barsetshire. "It will probably be necessary for you to review the
connection which still exists between, and which binds together,
the Church and the State." Mr. Daubeny's words had of course been
more fluent, but the gist of the expression was the same. He had
been quite in earnest when addressing his friends in the country.
And though there had been but an interval of a few weeks, the
Conservative party in the two Houses heard the paragraph read
without surprise and without a murmur. Some said that the gentlemen
on the Treasury Bench in the House of Commons did not look to be
comfortable. Mr. Daubeny sat with his hat over his brow, mute,
apparently impassive and unapproachable, during the reading of
the Speech and the moving and seconding of the Address. The House
was very full, and there was much murmuring on the side of the
Opposition;--but from the Government benches hardly a sound was
heard, as a young gentleman, from one of the Midland counties, in
a deputy-lieutenant's uniform, who had hitherto been known for no
particular ideas of his own, but had been believed to be at any rate
true to the Church, explained, not in very clear language, that the
time had at length come when the interests of religion demanded a
wider support and a fuller sympathy than could be afforded under that
system of Church endowment and State establishment for which the
country had hitherto been so grateful, and for which the country
had such boundless occasion for gratitude. Another gentleman, in
the uniform of the Guards, seconded the Address, and declared that
in nothing was the sagacity of a Legislature so necessary as in
discerning the period in which that which had hitherto been good
ceased to be serviceable. The status pupillaris was mentioned, and
it was understood that he had implied that England was now old enough
to go on in matters of religion without a tutor in the shape of a
State Church.
Who makes the speeches, absolutely puts together the words, which
are uttered when the Address is moved and seconded? It can hardly be
that lessons are prepared and sent to the noble lords and honourable
gentlemen to be learned by heart like a school-boy's task. And
yet, from their construction, style, and general tone,--from the
platitudes which they contain as well as from the general safety
and good sense of the remarks,--from the absence of any attempt to
improve a great occasion by the fire of oratory, one cannot but be
convinced that a very absolute control is exercised. The gorgeously
apparelled speakers, who seem to have great latitude allowed them in
the matter of clothing, have certainly very little in the matter of
language. And then it always seems that either of the four might
have made the speech of any of the others. It could not have been
the case that the Hon. Colonel Mowbray Dick, the Member for West
Bustard, had really elaborated out of his own head that theory of
the status pupillaris. A better fellow, or a more popular officer,
or a sweeter-tempered gentleman than Mowbray Dick does not exist;
but he certainly never entertained advanced opinions respecting the
religious education of his country. When he is at home with his
family, he always goes to church, and there has been an end of it.
And then the fight began. The thunderbolts of opposition were
unloosed, and the fires of political rancour blazed high. Mr. Gresham
rose to his legs, and declared to all the world that which he had
hitherto kept secret from his own party. It was known afterwards that
in discussion with his own dearly-beloved political friend, Lord
Cantrip, he had expressed his unbounded anger at the duplicity, greed
for power, and want of patriotism displayed by his opponent; but he
had acknowledged that the blow had come so quick and so unexpectedly
that he thought it better to leave the matter to the House without
instruction from himself. He now revelled in sarcasm, and before
his speech was over raged into wrath. He would move an amendment to
the Address for two reasons,--first because this was no moment for
bringing before Parliament the question of the Church establishment,
when as yet no well-considered opportunity of expressing itself on
the subject had been afforded to the country, and secondly because
any measure of reform on that matter should certainly not come to
them from the right honourable gentleman opposite. As to the first
objection, he should withhold his arguments till the bill suggested
had been presented to them. It was in handling the second that he
displayed his great power of invective. All those men who then sat in
the House, and who on that night crowded the galleries, remember his
tones as, turning to the dissenters who usually supported him, and
pointing over the table to his opponents, he uttered that well-worn
quotation, _Quod minime reris_,--then he paused, and began again;
_Quod minime reris,--Graiâ pandetur ab urbe_. The power and inflexion
of his voice at the word _Graiâ_ were certainly very wonderful. He
ended by moving an amendment to the Address, and asking for support
equally from one side of the House as from the other.
When at length Mr. Daubeny moved his hat from his brow and rose to
his legs he began by expressing his thankfulness that he had not
been made a victim to the personal violence of the right honourable
gentleman. He continued the same strain of badinage throughout,--in
which he was thought to have been wrong, as it was a method of
defence, or attack, for which his peculiar powers hardly suited him.
As to any bill that was to be laid upon the table, he had not as yet
produced it. He did not doubt that the dissenting interests of the
country would welcome relief from an anomaly, let it come whence
it might, even _Graiâ ab urbe_, and he waved his hand back to
the clustering Conservatives who sat behind him. That the right
honourable gentleman should be angry he could understand, as the
return to power of the right honourable gentleman and his party had
been anticipated, and he might almost say discounted as a certainty.
Then, when Mr. Daubeny sat down, the House was adjourned.