"You'll have to buy some more," said Gerard Maule.

"Buy some more!" said Lord Chiltern, turning round, and looking at
the man. "He talks of buying horses as he would sugar plums!" Then
they trotted in at the gate, and in two minutes were at the hall
door.




CHAPTER VIII

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