"Possibly. Your fanatic is the best fighting machine yet invented. Do you not see that these two classes form a regiment against which no trainbands, no force which these planters could raise, would stand?"
"But they are scattered, dispersed through the colony!"
"Ay, but they can be brought together! And to that end, seeing how few there are upon any one plantation, upon the day when they rise, they must raise with them servants and slaves. Then will they overpower masters and overseers, and gathering to one point, form there a force which will beat down all opposition. It is simple enough. We will but do that which it was proposed to do ten years ago. You know the instructions given by the Parliament to the four commissioners?"
"They were to summon the colony to surrender to the Commonwealth. If it did so, well and good; if not, war was to be declared, and the servants invited to rise against their masters and so purchase their freedom."
"Precisely. Berkeley submitted, and there was no rising. This time there will be no summons, but a rising, and a very great one. It will be, primarily, a rising of four hundred Oliverians, strong to avenge many and grievous wrongs; but with them will rise servants and slaves, and to the banner of the Commonwealth, beneath which they will march, will flock every Nonconformist in the land, and, when success is assured, then will come in and give us weight and respectability those (and they are not a few) of the better classes who long in their hearts for the good days of the Commonwealth, and yet dare not lift a finger to bring them back."
"And the royalists?"
"If they resist, their blood be upon them! But there shall be no carnage, no butchery. And if they submit they shall be unmolested, even as they were ten years ago. There is land enough for all."
"The servants and slaves?"
"They that join with us, of whatever class, shall be freed."
"This insurrection is actually in train?"