haps, some two
dozen with him, would support the second reading, declaring that they
could not reconcile it with their consciences to record a vote in
favour of a union of Church and State. On all such occasions as the
present Mr. Turnbull was sure to make himself disagreeable to those
who sat near to him in the House. He was a man who thought that so
much was demanded of him in order that his independence might be
doubted by none. It was nothing to him, he was wont to say, who
called himself Prime Minister, or Secretary here, or President there.
But then there would be quite as much of this independence on the
Conservative as on the Liberal side of the House. Surely there would
be more than two dozen gentlemen who would be true enough to the
cherished principles of their whole lives to vote against such a Bill
as this! It was the fact that there were so very few so true which
added such a length to the faces of the country parsons. Six months
ago not a country gentleman in England would have listened to such a
proposition without loud protests as to its revolutionary wickedness.
And now, under the sole pressure of one man's authority, the subject
had become so common that men were assured that the thing would be
done even though of all things that could be done it were the worst.
"It is no good any longer having any opinion upon anything," one
parson said to another, as they sat together at their club with
their newspapers in their hands. "Nothing frightens any one,--no
infidelity, no wickedness, no revolution. All reverence is at an end,
and the Holy of Holies is no more even to the worshipper than the
threshold of the Temple." Though it became known that the Bill would
be lost, what comfort was there in that, when the battle was to be
won, not by the chosen Israelites to whom the Church with all its
appurtenances ought to be dear, but by a crew of Philistines who
would certainly follow the lead of their opponents in destroying the
holy structure?

On the Friday the debate was continued with much life on the
Ministerial side of the House. It was very easy for them to cry
Faction! Faction! and hardly necessary for them to do more. A few
parrot words had been learned as to the expediency of fitting the
great and increasing Church of England to the growing necessity of
the age. That the CHURCH OF ENGLAND would still be the CHURCH OF
ENGLAND was repeated till weary listeners were sick of the unmeaning
words. But the zea