The whole of the next morning was spent in canvassing, and the whole of the afternoon.  In the evening there was a great meeting at the Polwenning Assembly Room, which at the present moment was in the hands of the Conservative Party.  Here Frank Tregear made an oration, in which he declared his political convictions.  The whole speech was said at the time to be very good; but the portion of it which was apparently esteemed the most, had direct reference to Mr Carbottle.  Who was Mr Carbottle?  Why had he come to Polpenno?  Who had sent for him?  Why Mr Carbottle rather than anybody else?  Did not the people of Polpenno think that it might be as well to send Mr Carbottle from the place from whence he had come?  These questions, which seemed to Silverbridge to be as easy as they were attractive, almost made him desirous of making a speech himself.

Then Mr Williams, the rector, followed, a gentleman who had many staunch friends and many bitter enemies in the town.  He addressed himself chiefly to that bane of the whole country—­as he conceived them,—­the godless dissenters; and was felt by Tregear to be injuring the cause by every word he spoke.  It was necessary that Mr Williams should liberate his own mind, and therefore he persevered with the godless dissenters at great length,—­not explaining, however, how a man who thought enough about his religion to be a dissenter could be godless, or how a godless man should care enough about religion to be a dissenter.

Mr Williams was heard with impatience, and then there was a clamour for the young lord.  He was the son of an ex-Prime Minister, and therefore of course should speak.  He was himself a member of Parliament, and therefore should speak.  He had boldly severed himself from the faulty political tenets of the family, and therefore on such an occasion as this was peculiarly entitled to speak.  When a man goes electioneering, he must speak.  At a dinner-table to refuse is possible:—­or in any assembly convened for any private purpose, a gentleman may declare that he is not prepared for the occasion.  But in such an emergency as this, a man,—­and a member of Parliament,—­cannot plead that he is not prepared.  A son of a former Prime Minister who had already taken so strong a part in politics as to have severed himself from his father, not prepared to address the voters of a borough whom he had come to canvass!  The plea was so absurd, that he was thrust on to his feet before he knew what he was about.

It was in truth his first public speech.  At Silverbridge he had attempted to repeat a few words, and in his failure had been covered by the Sprugeons and the Sprouts.  But now he was on his legs in a great room, in an unknown town, with all the aristocracy of the place before him!  His eyes at first swam a little, and there was a moment in which he thought he would run away.  But, on that morning, as he was dressing, there had come to his mind the idea of the possibility of such a moment as this, and a