The remaining three words of his peroration were lost in a frenzy of applause. The platform rose and bowed, and as refreshments could not be given (under the "Corrupt Practices Act") within the precincts of the building, the proceedings terminated with a hearty handshake all round and the immediate dispersion of the audience to another place. When they reached home, Mr. Clutterbuck's kind host, though himself an abstainer, opened a bottle of champagne, not indeed for Mr. Clutterbuck, whose principles he well knew, but for Mrs. Clutterbuck, his wife, to whom was given the toast of honour, for Mr. Maple, for Mr. Maple's nephew and his two sons, and a Mr. and Mrs. Charles, who between them did honour to the bottle, and very soon despatched it; then, in the midst of hearty thanks and renewed congratulations, each party left for its home. And that night at last, after so many nights, Mr. Clutterbuck was permitted to sleep, and slept. He was a Member of Parliament. CHAPTER VIII The Mickleton election was a blow that sounded through England. The hardy mountaineers of Wales, to whom our discussions, save where they regard religion, so rarely appeal, knew that the manhood of the slate quarries was free; sailors, newly landed from distant climes, though singularly apathetic as a class to the glories of our party system, found themselves expected to lift one of their many glasses to the Mickleton election; and in the bowels of the earth the brawny miners of Durham alluded to Mr. Clutterbuck and his success in the simplest and most poignant of terms. The thoughtful who direct the development of English Socialism had seen, long before, the capital nature of the crisis, and naturally deplored an expression of public opinion which by forbidding forced labour set so powerful an obstacle in the path of the ideal state; the strict party organs of the Opposition were also bound to deplore the result, but every sheet of independent position was agreed as to the significance of the election and few judges indeed since Jeffries have incurred the epithets, whether grave or severe, which had so long been withheld, and now, on the morrow of the election, fell from all sides upon the honest but narrow and pointed head of Mr. Justice Hunnybubble--for Welch (concurring) was by now quite ignored, and the stronger man was the target of renown. The wide field of suburban, colonial, American and Indian thought commanded by the _Spectator_ might indeed have murmured at the new privilege which the working classes threatened to acquire, had not that review with singular manliness and courage stood out at the critical moment with a strong declaration in favour of the spirit which Mickleton had shown.