A disagreeable-looking man with a big round nose, small red eyes, unshaven face, and slightly unsteady voice, rose, laid down his pipe, and beckoned to Zachariah, who advanced towards him.
The Secretary—for he it was—produced a memorandum-book, and began with a stutter:
“In the sacred name of—”
“Stop!” cried Zachariah, “I don’t swear.”
“That will do,” shouted the Major across a hubbub which arose—“religious. I’ll answer for him: let him sign; that’s enough.”
“You are answerable,” growled the Secretary “if he’s a d—d spy we’ll have his blood, that’s all, and yours too, Major.” The Major took no notice, and Zachariah put his name in the book, the roll of the Red Lion Friends of the People.
“Business, Mr. Secretary—the last minutes.”
The minutes were read, and an adjourned debate was then renewed on a motion to organise public meetings to petition in favour of Parliamentary Reform. The reader must understand that politics in those days were somewhat different from the politics of fifty or sixty years later. Bread was thirteenpence a quartern loaf; the national debt, with a much smaller population, was what it is now; everything was taxed, and wages were very low. But what was most galling was the fact that the misery, the taxes, and the debt had been accumulated, not by the will of the people, but by a corrupt House of Commons, the property of borough-mongers, for the sake of supporting the Bourbons directly, but indirectly and chiefly the House of Hanover and the hated aristocracy. There was also a scandalous list of jobs and pensions. Years afterwards, when the Government was forced to look into abuses, the Reverend Thomas Thurlow, to take one example amongst others, was awarded, as compensation for the loss of his two offices, Patentee of Bankrupts and Keeper of Hanaper, the modest allowance annually until his death of £11,380 14s. 6d. The men and women of that time, although there were scarcely any newspapers, were not fools, and there was not a Nottingham weaver who put a morsel of bread in his hungry belly who did not know that two morsels might have gone there if there were no impost on foreign corn to maintain rents, and if there were no interest to pay on money borrowed to keep these sacred kings and lords safe in their palaces and parks. Opinion at the Red Lion Friends of the People Club was much divided. Some were for demonstrations and agitation, whilst others were for physical force. The discussion went on irregularly amidst much tumult.
“How long would they have waited over the water if they had done nothing but jaw? They met together and tore down the Bastile, and that’s what we must do.”
“That may be true,” said a small white-faced man who neither smoked nor drank, “but what followed? You don’t do anything really till you’ve reasoned it out.”