William Holl smiled pityingly, his wife sadly. “Sairey is right,” her husband said. “We have done very well, and I for one don’t want no change. I should like to own my horse and cart, but I don’t see that the charter is going to give it me. So let well alone, says I.” “Anyhow, William,” Sarah said, “it has done neither you nor Bessy any good. When I think of what you both were two years ago, and what you are now, it makes me sick of the very name of the Charter.” “The first disciples of a cause always suffer,” William Holl said earnestly, “and Bessy and I must be content to do the same. When we look back some day upon our success, we shall be rewarded.” “The success you will have to look back upon some day, William Holl, if you don’t watch it,” A 56 said, “will be finding yourself some fine morning shut up between four walls.” “The voice of the million cannot be put down!” William Holl said, sententiously. “Yes, it can, Uncle William,” James said, “when the million don’t happen to be united, and the two or three hundred thousand who are their masters, and who have an armed force at their command, are perfectly unanimous.” “The history of the world says otherwise.” “In some cases, uncle, I grant you, where the million are really ground down, as you are so fond of saying, or are crying for bread, their voice is, I allow, irresistible, but unless their grievance is a real one, and their hearts are in it, it may be very loud, but no one cares for it. Your opponents have strength, and perfect unanimity; they have the law on their side, the troops and the police, and against all this your mere mob is a wave against a rock.” “The French Revolution, James, has taught us the power of the people.” “The French Revolution!” James laughed. “You will never play that game over here, nor is it the slightest criterion for you. The French people had reason on their side, they had justice if not law. The people were tyrannised over to an extent we can hardly understand; they groaned under an overbearing nobility with feudal power, who looked upon them as hardly human beings; their condition was dreadful, and they were nearly starving. They had something to fight for. But we are not mere slaves as they were, nor are we starving. The French people groaned under so terrible a tyranny, that the whole of the middle classes, the great proportion of the clergy, and a good many even of the nobles were at first with them—in fact were the Revolution, although in the end the people turned upon their benefactors, and destroyed nobility, clergy, and middle class. The people there were at the commencement united with the middle class, and at any rate knew what they were fighting for, and were sufficiently in earnest to be ready to give their lives for their cause. You stand alone; the middle classes are more bitterly opposed to you than even the upper, you have no unity among yourselves, and lastly, you are fighting for you know not what—for a chimera.”