shameful hypocrisy to talk about Local Option! But can you wonder? You
know he's an atheist? Oh yes, I know he goes to Church, but that's all a
blind. His one object is to do away with Religion. Yes, they do say he
has been in the Divorce Court, but I should not like to say I know it,
though I quite believe it. His great friend, Mr. Comus, certainly was,
and Mr. Quickly only got off by paying an immense sum in hush-money.
They're all tarred with the same brush, and it really is a religious
duty to keep them out of Parliament."

Such I have observed to be the attitude of parochial clergy and
church-workers towards Liberal candidates.

"They said their duty both to man and God
Required such conduct--which seemed very odd."

I suppose they would have justified it by that zeal for Established
Churches and Sectarian Schools which, if it does not actually "eat up"
its votaries, certainly destroys their sense of proportion and
perspective.[29]

Though I have said so much about the pugnacity of the clergy, I would
not have it supposed that the Tory laity were slack or backward in
political activity. To verbal abuse one soon became case-hardened; but
one had also to encounter physical violence. In those days, stones and
cabbage-stalks and rotten eggs still played a considerable part in
electioneering. Squires hid their gamekeepers in dark coppices with
instructions to pelt one as one drove past after dark. The linch-pin was
taken out of one's carriage while one was busy at a meeting; and it was
thought seriously unsafe for the candidate to walk unescorted through
the hostile parts of the borough.

But, after all, this animosity, theological, moral, physical, did no
great harm. It quickened the zeal and strengthened the resolve of one's
supporters; and it procured one the inestimable aid of young, active,
and pugnacious friends, who formed themselves into a body-guard and a
cycle-corps, protecting their candidate when the play was rough, and
spreading the light all over the constituency.

Why did not Lord Beaconsfield dissolve Parliament in July, 1878, when he
returned in a blaze of triumph from the Congress of Berlin? Probably
because his nerve had failed him, and he chose to retain his supremacy
unquestioned, rather than commit it to the chances of a General
Election. Anyhow, he let the moment pass; and from that time on his
Government began to lose ground. In 1879 _Vanity Fair_, a strongly
Disraelitish or