"Oh, my son! my friends! Had we been free, we would have succeeded in preventing these acts of savagery that are so fatal to our cause! Alas, it is now too late! What is the mysterious law that causes the re-vindication of human rights ever to drag excesses in its wake! The vassals of the Count of Plouernel first submitted their grievances humbly to him, and presented the surely legitimate demands which they formulated in the Peasant Code. Had the Count listened to their claims, he would have done an act of humanity and justice, and he would have preserved his privileges. By yielding to the peasants' wishes, and discontinuing to look upon his peasants as beasts of burden, that man would have shown himself not only just, but also intelligent in his own interest. If these wretched people were spared the homicidal privations that, before taking them to their graves, gradually sap their health, undermine their strength, and render them unfit for continued toil, they would have yielded more wealth to him, and would have rendered more fruitful the seigniorial domains. But no! In his pitiless egotism, the Count of Plouernel answered the peasants' prayers with disdain, with insult, with murder! They thereupon grew furious, enraged. They returned blow for blow, death for death; gave themselves over to frightful acts of reprisal; killed their seigneur; and now ravage and burn down his castle! It will cost the brother of the Count of Plouernel a good deal to repair the disasters of this single night--twenty times more than it would have cost the Count to ease his vassals for a century and more of the taxes that oppressed them. Alas! This is not an isolated instance in history. Did not the seigneurs and their bishops proceed in the same manner during the Middle Ages towards those communes which our ancestor Fergan the Quarryman was one of the most intrepid to defend? The communiers also began with humble supplications to their seigneurs, or their bishops, to alleviate their taxes. But both seigneurs and bishops ordered their men-at-arms to mow down the 'villains' and 'clowns.' And, thereupon, 'clowns' and 'villains' rose in revolt, and, arms in hand, at the price of their blood, and after taking signal vengeance, conquered the franchises and the charters--the safeguards of their freedom! Even during the last century, did not the Reformers first request humbly that they be granted the right to exercise their own cult? But the Church and the Crown answered their prayers with the pyre and wholesale massacres. And thereupon the Reformers in turn, rose in revolt, and, after a half century of bloody religious wars, the Edict of Nantes finally consecrated and confirmed the four edicts of tolerance which the Huguenots had conquered, arms in hand. And yet, as our ancestor Christian the printer said in the days of Francis I, a simple decree of two lines only, recognizing in all the right to exercise their cult,