There was a general sound of applause when he ceased.
“But,” said the man who had before objected, “we are not in the same position the French people were; we are quite unarmed.”
“You are always timid, Wilkins,” one of the others said; “and timid counsels have had their way long enough; it is the time now for action. At any rate there are paving-stones, and a good supply of paving-stones on the tops of the houses make a street nasty walking for the best soldiers in the world. Besides, there are the gunsmiths’ shops; our first move will, of course, be to possess ourselves of the contents of them, and then to take possession of the arsenal in the Tower; it is not half so strong as the Bastile was.”
“Woe be to London if they try and oppose us by force,” a man at the other end of the table said. “We shall only have to call for our friend Turner’s lambs; and it will take more troops than London can bring to keep down St. Giles’s and Westminster.”
The man to whom he alluded was a powerful man, with a ruddy face, a low forehead, overhanging eyebrows, and a coarse sensual mouth; he was a butcher of Clare Market, and might have been well drawn for his prototype the famous butcher Lepelletier, the leader of the faubourgs of the French Revolution. He smiled significantly.
“Ay, ay,” he said, “if you once let my lambs loose, the devil himself would not chain them up, as long as there is a shop ungutted in London.”
William Holl, and several others of the same class, made a movement of disgust and dissent.
“I trust to God it will never come to that.”
“I hope not, too,” another speaker said, “but we must not blink the fact; we must let those who would keep us down know, that we have it in our power to compel them to assent to the popular will; and that unless they obey it we will use that power. By so doing we shall gain the support to a certain extent of all the shop-keepers, who are at heart our most bitter opponents, for, rather than have their shops sacked, they will be glad enough to help us to put a pressure upon the Houses to do us justice.”
“I agree with you there,” William Holl said; “as a threat they will be useful, but I for one will never consent to invoking riot and robbery for our aid. In the French Revolution, anyone caught with plunder about him was hung up instantly, and I should vote that we did the same; as far as ourselves go, I should not hesitate, if necessary, to resort to arms, and would fight to the last with my fellow-workmen in an effort for liberty, but not by the side of St. Giles’s. But I do hope, and I believe, that it will never come to that. I trust that Parliament will quietly yield to the wishes of the nation.”