“No; I only heard what they were all saying in Pentreath. I met many friends, and they all told me something. The Duke of Wellington, when he found the King would create enough new peers to pass the bill, if that was the only resource left, retired from his place in the House, and, some say, will retire from public life altogether. Lord Wharncliffe and his party of waverers came over at once to the side of Lord Grey, and so the bill was passed at once. The people are wild with delight, the bells are being rung, and bonfires are being built up. I sometimes wonder whether they really understand what it is that they rejoice at. They seem to think that some wonderfully good time is coming for them. Poor creatures! I fear they will be disappointed. An act of constitutional justice has been done; but the troubles of England lie far, far deeper than an imperfect system of constitutional representation.” Eustace was eagerly skimming the contents of newspapers and private letters, and from time to time giving bits of information to his wife; but the sense of her words came home to his mind for all that, and by-and-bye, laying down the papers, he said-- “That is only too true, Bride. That is the very point upon which my eyes have been opened latterly. I used to think that good government and pure government was the backbone of a nation’s prosperity and well-being--as in one sense of the word it is. I mean, that if all men were doing their utmost to walk in the ways appointed by God, we should have a pure and good government, and the nation would prosper. But I see only too clearly now that I was quite deceived in my old belief that this country and the world can ever be renovated and made good by any scheme of political reform instituted by man. We may do our best to be just and temperate, to act uprightly, and think impartially of the interests of all classes; but that alone will never raise them, never give them true happiness, never lift them out of the degradation into which they, as well as too many of us so-called ‘superiors,’ have fallen. There is only one Power which can do that, only one Power mighty enough for that task, and that is the Power of which I fear that we, as a nation of politicians and upright rulers, think singularly little. The time may come when we shall awake to the remembrance that God must be Ruler in the earth if right and justice and equity are to be done; but at present, though we listen to such words with approval from the pulpit, we are absolutely ignorant how to put them into daily practice, and our profession and practice are utterly at variance. That is where our failure comes in, and where I, for one, foresee failure all along the line. This bill may be the inauguration of an enlightened and liberal policy for the next generation; but my old hope of seeing the world raised out of its misery, its degradation, its wickedness by any such means, is fading fast within me.”