“Ay, ay,” he said, “if you once let my lambs loose, the devil himself would not chain them up, as long as there is a shop ungutted in London.” William Holl, and several others of the same class, made a movement of disgust and dissent. “I trust to God it will never come to that.” “I hope not, too,” another speaker said, “but we must not blink the fact; we must let those who would keep us down know, that we have it in our power to compel them to assent to the popular will; and that unless they obey it we will use that power. By so doing we shall gain the support to a certain extent of all the shop-keepers, who are at heart our most bitter opponents, for, rather than have their shops sacked, they will be glad enough to help us to put a pressure upon the Houses to do us justice.” “I agree with you there,” William Holl said; “as a threat they will be useful, but I for one will never consent to invoking riot and robbery for our aid. In the French Revolution, anyone caught with plunder about him was hung up instantly, and I should vote that we did the same; as far as ourselves go, I should not hesitate, if necessary, to resort to arms, and would fight to the last with my fellow-workmen in an effort for liberty, but not by the side of St. Giles’s. But I do hope, and I believe, that it will never come to that. I trust that Parliament will quietly yield to the wishes of the nation.” A significant look passed between two or three of the more advanced party. A peaceful solution would have ill suited their plans and schemes; and had William Holl’s wishes been carried into effect, he would have found, as his predecessors, the Girondists, had done, another Mountain to oppose him, and perhaps met with such a fate as them in the end. “I should say,” another man said, “that the whole of the working classes in London—every man—should be agreed to meet at three or four centres, such as Primrose Hill, Hyde Park, and Kennington Common, and that they should go in procession to Westminster to present our petition, and should call upon the House to name an early day for its consideration. That on that day we should again assemble, and march to the House; that we should fill the galleries, and sit there till it had passed. That we should have everything prepared in case of refusal; the men all told off in companies under officers, and their work given to each; so many to the gunsmiths’ shops, so many to the Tower; the rest to throw up barricades. That an agreement should be made with the northern towns to rise simultaneously; and that we should then as a people declare Parliament dissolved, and proclaim a Republic. That we should disarm the troops when they did not resist us, annihilate them when they did, and then proceed all over the country to elect a house of representatives by universal suffrage.”