"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?"
"Let us call it a revolution. Yes, it is in train as far as regards the Oliverians. We have but begun to sound servants and slaves."
"And you?"
"I am, for lack of a better, General to the Oliverians."
"And you believe yourself able to control these motley forces,—men wronged and revengeful, fanatics, peasants, brutal negroes, mulattoes (whom they say are devils), convicts,—to say to them, 'Thus far must you go, and no farther.' You invoke a fiend that may turn and rend you!"