You could easily detect the Chartists in the town. They were not the best workmen, but they were the best supporters of the publicans, who at that time had not ventured to raise the cry of Beer and the Bible. However, on the night of the meeting—which was in the open air—all the workmen in the place, good or bad, Chartist or not, assembled in considerable numbers. The British operative is wonderfully influenced by the gift of the gab. It always fetches him, as Artemus Ward would say. He is not, as a rule, much of an orator himself, and fluent and fervid declamation sooner makes a fool of him than it does of the rest of the community. The editor of the _Trumpet of Freedom_ was aware of this failing of the working-class, of whom he constituted himself the champion, and was able to supply them with any amount of the article in question. If he was poor in ideas he was rich in words, in that respect being gifted almost as much as an Irish orator. I need not give the particulars of his speech. It was one he had often made before, and of a character very common before the Corn Laws were repealed, when the Tories were playing the game of the Chartists, and contending for all the abuses which the latter pointed to as illustrations of the need of their famous remedy for all the evils to which political flesh is heir. The speaker was particularly severe on the lazy lives of the parsons, and the way in which they humbugged the people. They were charged with every crime. They were none of them righteous, no, not one. If a profligate prince reigned, who more fulsome in his praise than the Bishops? If a profligate war was to be carried on—a war which was to slaughter thousands of honest lads, and to reduce thousands of homes to wretchedness and want—did not the Bishops consecrate the banners, and offer up the mockery of a prayer to heaven, as if God approved of such wanton slaughter? Did they not always vote against the interests of the public? Every parson was a robber of the poor. Did they not take the tithes? Did they not take the part of the rich against the poor? Did not they preach submission to the powers that be? Did they not drive the wretched voters, at election times, to vote for the Tories? ‘Down with the parsons!’ said the speaker, and the cry was repeated angrily by the mob. Some said, ‘More pigs and fewer parsons’; others hinted it would be as well to march to the Rectory, and to taste some of the Rector’s old port; others that there would be no great harm if they were to burn down his house and hunt him out of the town.