should have been permitted to oust the wealth and reputability of Polterham from an Institute which ought to have been one of the bulwarks of Conservatism.  Laxity in the original constitution, and a spirit of supine confidence, had led to this sad result.  It seemed impossible that Polterham could ever fall from its honourable position among the Conservative strongholds of the country; but the times were corrupt, a revolutionary miasma was spreading to every corner of the land.  Polterham must no longer repose in the security of conscious virtue, for if it did happen that, at the coming election, the unprincipled multitude even came near to achieving a triumph, oh what a fall were there!

Thus spoke the Mercury.  And in the same week Mr. Mumbray’s vacant house was secured by a provisional committee on behalf of the Polterham Constitutional Literary Society.

The fine old crusted party had some reason for their alarm.  Since Polterham was a borough it had returned a Tory Member as a matter of course.  Political organization was quite unknown to the supporters of Mr. Welwyn-Baker; such trouble had never seemed necessary.  Through the anxious year of 1868 Mr. Welwyn-Baker sat firm as a rock; an endeavour to unseat him ended amid contemptuous laughter.  In 1874 the high-tide of Toryism caused only a slight increase of congratulatory gurgling in the Polterham backwater; the triumphant party hardly cared to notice that a Liberal candidate had scored an unprecedented proportion of votes.  Welwyn-Baker sat on, stolidly oblivious of the change that was affecting his constituency, denying indeed the possibility of mutation in human things.  Yet even now the Literary Institute was passing into the hands of people who aimed at making it something more than a place where retired tradesmen could play draughts and doze over Good Words; already had offensive volumes found harbourage on the shelves, and revolutionary periodicals been introduced into the reading-room.  From time to time the Mercury uttered a note of warning, of protest, but with no echo from the respectable middle-class abodes where Polterham Conservatism dozed in self-satisfaction.  It needed another five years of Liberal activity throughout the borough to awaken the good people whose influence had seemed unassailable, and to set them uttering sleepy snorts of indignation But the Mercury had a new editor, a man who was determined to gain journalistic credit by making a good fight in a desperate cause.  Mr. Mumbray, who held the post of Mayor, had at length learnt that even in municipal matters the old order was threatened; on the Town Council were several men who gave a great deal of trouble, and who openly boasted that in a very short time all the affairs of the town would be managed by members of the Progressive party.  If so, farewell public morality! farewell religion!