I Forbid the Banns! — page 258: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

248 “7 FORBID THE BANNS!” hours’ question or, if it came to that, on a six hours’ ques- tion. Just as the young man who has no other means of subsistence than taking holy orders is ready to subscribe conscientiously not only to thirty-nine but to forty articles, if necessary, so the conscientious politician will, when the rumors of a general election are in the air, accept the six hours’ principle to get the votes of the working men, who like every good thing except work. He will also express the soundest of views—that is to say, views that sound best —on local option, to try to catch the temperance party; but he will not refrain from hinting on the following day, in order to catch the publicans, what the government might reasonably be expected to do in abolishing the duty on beer —the natural beverage of the working man, especially when he is doing no work: when he is working he gets drunk, the Chancellor of the Exchequer assures us, upon rum. Lord Ashenthorpe had confidence in his own ability to satisfy all shades of social politicians—that is to say, he knew that he could lead them one by one into a maze of words - and leave them there. Modern politics he knew to be wholly amatter of promises. ‘The most promising Liberal candidate is the candidate who is most liberal with his promises. The first person seen by Bertha when she had dismounted from the phaeton was Lady Rushton, in the center of her group of plain daughters, with a husband that seemed a poor sort of thing behind her. She gave a gasp when she saw Bertha, and turned to Sir Edwin with uplifted hands and voice, calling his attention and the attention of everyone else within a considerable radius to the fact that Mr. Charlton and That Woman had actually had the effrontery to appear among respectable people. Sir Edwin was a poor thing, but he was a man; and he came to the conclusion that That Woman was an extremely handsome woman, and that she dismounted from the high phaeton with infinite grace. COMMICLYOOlKS (EC)