It was a mouth, not only for mutton, but for every other purpose to which that useful aperture could be applied; at present it was to be devoted to the task of conveying its owner’s mighty thoughts, in appropriate language, to the eager listeners who surrounded him.
This gentleman then, having, by dint of drawing in his lips and thrusting them out again, and rolling his eyes so fearfully as to suggest a sudden attack of English cholera, got up his steam to the required height, proceeded to inform the assembly that they were, individually and collectively, free and enlightened citizens of the great metropolis of Europe, prepared to recognise their sacred rights, and resolved to go forth as one man to assert and maintain them. Having imparted this information (through his nose, for the greater effect), he began to ask himself a species of Pinnock’s Catechism, so to speak, which ran somewhat after the following fashion:—
“And why am I here to-night? Because I love profit? No. Because I love personal distinction? No. Because I love my country? Yes. Because I would not see her children slaves? Yes. Because purse-proud oppressors, revelling in their wealth, trample on the honest poor man? Yes.”
Having said by heart several pages of this, in which he was exceedingly well up, and which he rattled off most fluently, he continued—
“But such tyranny shall not always be tolerated. British freemen, whose proud boast it is that they have never borne a foreign yoke, shall no longer crouch beneath a despotic rule at home. The atrocious barbarities of a brutal poor-law, which taxes honest householders to furnish salaried ruffians with power to drag the half-eaten crust from the famished jaws of helpless poverty——”
(A slight sensation was here occasioned by McDermott mentioning for the benefit of the meeting in general, and the orator himself in particular, his conviction that the last sentence was “very pretty indeed,” together with a polite inquiry as to whether he could not be so kind as to say it again. Peace being restored after sundry shouts of “Turn him out!”)
“Shame!” etc., the orator resumed—
“Let them build their bastiles, let them tear the wife from her husband, the mother from her child; let them crowd their prison-houses with the honest sons of labour whom their brutality has forced into crime—the poor man need never dread starvation while the hulks hunger and the gallows gapes for him—but a day of retribution is at hand; let the tyrants tremble beneath their gilded roofs—those unjust usurpers of the soil—the poor man’s bitterest foes, the landed gentry, as they arrogantly style themselves, must be cut off and rooted out.”
“Pretty strong, that!” observed Bracy, in a whisper.
“Ar—this won’t do, you know!” returned Grandeville, in an equally low voice. “I must, really—ar—interfere.”