The Address Before the 11th of November, the day on which Parliament was to meet, the whole country was in a hubbub.

Consternation and triumph were perhaps equally predominant, and equally strong.

There were those who declared that now at length was Great Britain to be ruined in actual present truth; and those who asserted that, of a sudden, after a fashion so wholly unexpected as to be divine,--as great fires, great famines, and great wars are called divine,--a mighty hand had been stretched out to take away the remaining incubus of superstition, priestcraft, and bigotry under which England had hitherto been labouring.

The proposed disestablishment of the State Church of England was, of course, the subject of this diversity of opinion.
And there was not only diversity, but with it great confusion.

The political feelings of the country are, as a rule, so well marked that it is easy, as to almost every question, to separate the sheep from the goats.