tics. This was
the Nonconformist Conscience--hitherto a _quantite negligeable_ in the
calculations of the leaders, but now one that it appeared absolutely
necessary to take into account as a factor. To be sure, there were a
good many people who put their tongues in their cheeks when any mention
was made of the Nonconformist Conscience: they said it was no more to be
taken seriously than the Spector on the Brocken or the Athanasian Creed.
It was only the trick of an electioneering agent desirous of escaping
from an untenable position.

There were other persons, however (mostly Nonconformists), who were
found ready to declare that the Nonconformist Conscience was a Great and
Living Truth. The only point upon which statesmen of all parties were
agreed was that it was worth purchasing. The Nonconformists themselves,
upon whom the Great and Living Truth was sprung, had no notion at first
that it could be turned into a negotiable security occupying as high a
place in the market as, say, Argentine bonds. But it did not take them
very long to find out that even an abstraction such as this could be
turned to good account by discreet maneuvering. Truth sometimes is heard
on an election platform, and yet truth is but an abstract quality. Why,
then should not a Great and Living Truth become a regular gold mine to
its inventor? It was as great an invention as the art of electroplating,
which it closely resembled, and a quite as nice thing could be made out
of it by a little dexterous manipulation. If the conscience is silver,
the Nonconformist Conscience is at least electroplate of a first-class
quality, it was argued; and a political manifesto, which was practically
a financial prospectus, was issued with a view of floating the
Nonconformist Conscience Company, Limited.

English politics cannot by any possibility be regarded as an exact
science; and thus it was that all political parties were at this time
making bids for shares in the enterprise. The leaders of one party, in
fact, expressed themselves ready to buy up the whole concern, and they
actually tendered bills payable at twelve months for all the vendors'
interest, and it was only when these bills became due and were returned
dishonored that the shadowy character of the transaction was made plain,
and the country was convulsed at the disclosure of the fact that the
vendors had disposed of a perfectly worthless invention, and that the
purchasers had paid for it by promises