“Yes.”
“If you want company, I’ll walk with you. What do you think of the Friends?”
Zachariah, it will be borne in mind, although he was a Democrat, had never really seen the world. He belonged to a religious sect. He believed in the people, it is true, but it was a people of Cromwellian Independents. He purposely avoided the company of men who used profane language, and never in his life entered a tavern. He did not know what the masses really were; for although he worked with his hands, printers were rather a superior set of fellows, and his was an old-established shop which took the best of its class. When brought actually into contact with swearers and drunkards as patriots and reformers he was more than a little shocked.
“Not much,” quoth he.
“Not worse than our virtuous substitute for a sovereign?”
“No, certainly.”
“You object to giving them votes, but is not the opinion of the silliest as good as that of Lord Sidmouth?”
“That’s no reason for giving them votes.”
“I should like to behold the experiment of a new form of misgovernment. If we are to be eternally enslaved to fools and swindlers, why not a change? We have had regal misrule and aristocratic swindling long enough.”
“Seriously, my friend,” he continued, “study that immortal charter, the Declaration of the Rights of Man.”