een believed that he was sound. What
might be the special ideas of his own mind regarding ecclesiastical
policy in general, it had not been thought necessary to consider.
His utterances had been confusing, mysterious, and perhaps purposely
unintelligible; but that was matter of little moment so long as he
was prepared to defend the establishment of the Church of England
as an institution adapted for English purposes. On that point it
was believed that he was sound. To that mast it was supposed he had
nailed his own colours and those of his party. In defending that
fortress it was thought that he would be ready to fall, should the
defence of it require a fall. It was because he was so far safe that
he was there. And yet he spoke these words without consulting a
single friend, or suggesting the propriety of his new scheme to a
single supporter. And he knew what he was doing. This was the way in
which he had thought it best to make known to his own followers, not
only that he was about to abandon the old Institution, but that they
must do so too!

As regarded East Barsetshire itself, he was returned, and feted, and
sent home with his ears stuffed with eulogy, before the bucolic mind
had discovered his purpose. On so much he had probably calculated.
But he had calculated also that after an interval of three or four
days his secret would be known to all friends and enemies. On the day
after his speech came the report of it in the newspapers; on the next
day the leading articles, in which the world was told what it was
that the Prime Minister had really said. Then, on the following day,
the startled parsons, and the startled squires and farmers, and,
above all, the startled peers and members of the Lower House, whose
duty it was to vote as he should lead them, were all agog. Could it
be that the newspapers were right in this meaning which they had
attached to these words? On the day week after the election in East
Barsetshire, a Cabinet Council was called in London, at which it
would, of course, be Mr. Daubeny's duty to explain to his colleagues
what it was that he did purpose to do.

In the meantime he saw a colleague or two.

"Let us look it straight in the face," he said to a noble colleague;
"we must look it in the face before long."

"But we need not hurry it forward."

"There is a storm coming. We knew that before, and we heard the sound
of it from every husting in the country. How shall we rule the storm
so that