Who could eat mince pies
or think of Twelfth Night while so terribly wicked a scheme was in
progress for keeping the real majority out in the cold? It was the
injustice of the thing that rankled so deeply,--that, and a sense
of inferiority to the cleverness displayed by Mr. Daubeny! It was
as when a player is checkmated by some audacious combination of
two pawns and a knight, such being all the remaining forces of the
victorious adversary, when the beaten man has two castles and a queen
upon the board. It was, indeed, worse than this,--for the adversary
had appropriated to his own use the castles and the queen of the
unhappy vanquished one. This Church Reform was the legitimate
property of the Liberals, and had not been as yet used by them only
because they had felt it right to keep in the background for some
future great occasion so great and so valuable a piece of ordnance.
It was theirs so safely that they could afford to bide their time.
And then,--so they all said, and so some of them believed,--the
country was not ready for so great a measure.
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