BLACK IS WHITE.

CHAPTER I.

ENGLISHMEN, having, at the moment, no special bodily grievance, were endeavouring to invent for themselves a spiritual worry; laymen, having all the revenues, which they could fairly claim, assured to them, were beginning to covet those of the clergy.

Politicians, again, wanted a want.

There was a moribund Parliament, and, if not a moribund, at least a very sickly Government. Worse still, it had absolutely nothing "to go to the country with." The people-the People with a big P-was yelling for nothing in particular. That it should be made to yell, before the next election, was absolutely necessary; for what it would yell, the Prime Minister did not much care: was not the People his People, and its yell his yell? That His Majesty's Opposition should not appropriate that yell, and that he himself should direct and control the yelling, was the chief object of the great man's ambition just at that time. One Sabbath morning, that very High Church Prime

Minister read accounts of two monster meetings about Disestablishment in his Observer at breakfast. As he came away from the mid-day service at St. Hilda's, the drums and fifes of the Salvationists suggested to his political mind that they also had votes, and one of his colleagues who walked home with him told him that there were rumours of a combination among Nonconformists to make Disarmament a test question at the next election. It therefore occurred to the good man that the religious sects of his nation would have to be reckoned with when the time should arrive for "going to the country."

There had for some time been growlings for Disestablishment, and the growl gradually became a howl, and the howl promised to become a yell; nor was it improbable that this particular yell would prove to be the yell of His Gracious Majesty the People when he should next proceed to select his Knights of the Shires.

The professors of the religion of Robert Elsmere, commonly called Elsmerians, had become a sect, immense both in numbers and in power; a mild form of Buddhism was on the increase, and Evangelical reaction was setting in, in the very heart of the Established Church. Ritualism was going out of fashion, and where it existed it was in general diluted with faddism of some kind; one ritualistic clergyman mixed it with spiritualism, another with hypnotism, a third with Wesleyanism, a fourth with Socialism, a fifth with

Pantheism, and so on. In short, while those outside the pale of the Established Church were trying to knock it down, those inside appeared to be trying to pull it to pieces.

In determining to respond to the Cry of the People, the famous legislator was very far from wishing to incur the odium of disestablishing his own Church; moreover, it would have been a very clumsy blunder on the part of so brilliant a statesman to answer to any demand directly. Rather than walk straight to meet people half way, he greatly preferred to travel double the distance slantwise.

Accordingly, the great mind of the great man conceived the original idea of gratifying the clamourers for Disestablishment by re-establishing instead of disestablishing the Church of his country. Obviously, there was very little stability in that Church at present, and he himself would stablish that unstable institution by the simple process of re-establishment.

"Are you contemplating concurrent endowment?" asked a member of his Government to whom he had partially communicated his designs.

"No; that is too hackneyed. Comprehension is to be the key-note of my scheme. I will bring the Methodists, the Baptists, the Elsmerians, the Salvationists, the Unitarians, and possibly even the Esoteric Buddhists, within the pale of a powerful, benevolent, and highly elastic Church."

the Alethians, and the host of other sects named in the page of small print in Whitaker's Almanack,' headed Religious Denominations and Sects'? Do you propose to comprehend them also, or what is to become of them?"

Oh, they may all go to the devil," said the pious Prime Minister.

If any one supposes that it is usual for Leaders of the House of Commons to ascertain the temper of their Parliaments or their nation by announcing their intentions and asking people what they think of them, that person is mistaken. On the contrary, great statesmen throw out skirmishers, who skirmish, not with the enemy directly, but with the enemy's skirmishers, and bring back reports to the general. A very useful force, indeed, is this Government light cavalry, which serves for eyes and ears to the political army. It was thus with regard to the already described scheme of the great Prime Minister. Somebodies, through somebody-elses, felt the pulse of this party and that faction, hinted that under conceivable circumstances possible concessions might be made, and endeavoured to find out what returns might be expected from those to whom the concessions would perchance be conceded under the just barely possible circumstances.

Long before anything definite was known of the intentions of the Government, there began to be an uneasy feeling in certain quarters and a hopeful feeling in others, and already pledges had been given and taken