Nor can I conceive any shabbier spectacle than the crowd which usually displays itself before a platform where Toryism is preached. For there assemble all who are the foes of liberty, the enemies and oppressors of mankind. Among the friends of liberty that night gathered upon the bridge of Bristol were several men armed and wearing uniform; soldiers, though not belonging to any regiment of the regular army. Volunteers, they were; a force then for the first time heard of in England, taking the place of the militia or "trained bands." They were on guard with a young officer in command, one who afterwards made name and fame in the annals of his Country, and his sword sharply felt by its enemies. For it was Captain John Birch--the merchant-soldier. The writers of the Restoration have flung their defiling mud at this brave man--which did not stick, however--by representing him as of humble birth, and mean calling--a common carrier, the driver of a pack-horse,--stigmas similar to that cast at Cromwell, the brewer of Huntingdon. But it should be remembered that in those days trade was not deemed degrading; and if here and there aristocratic noses were turned up at it, here and there also aristocratic people took a hand in it. What were the Coningsbys, those types of the Cavalier idea, but soap-boilers and soap-chandlers, holding a monopoly from the King for the making and selling of this useful commodity? As for John Birch, he was neither base-born nor of humble occupation; instead, engaged in honourable merchandise, and, for the times, on a somewhat extensive scale. His correspondence, extant, so far from proving him coarse or illiterate, shows both refinement and education beyond most of his contemporaries--soldier or civilian--even superior to that of the King himself. In intelligence and courage few were his equals, while, as a partisan leader, he is entitled to first place; some of his feats in the _guerilla_ line reading more like the fictions of troubadour romance. One of the earliest and most ardent espousers of the Parliamentary cause, he had enrolled this company of Bristol volunteers--most of them "Bridgemen"--with a detail of whom on the bridge itself he was now keeping guard; not so much against an outside enemy, but one within the city's walls. Bristol was full of Cavalier officers, prisoners in its gaols, but many of them freely circulating through the streets _on parole_--ready to break it if they but saw the chance, as some of them, to their eternal disgrace, actually did; though it failed to disgrace them in the eyes of their Royal master, who rather, the more favoured them after--as with Vavasour--promoting them to higher command!